*
They’d used pulleys to raise him into a sitting position with his feet outstretched and there was nothing to sit upon, so all Silin’s weight was supported by his wrist bands and his arms became dislocated first at the shoulder and then at the elbows by his writhing in agony from what they did to him.
Sobelov himself began beating the soles of Silin’s feet, pausing periodically to repeat the one question he wanted answered, and when he grew tired he gave the metal rod to each of the Commission until Silin’s feet swelled into footballs. He screamed over and over again and his bowels collapsed but he didn’t give Sobelov the names. They crushed Silin’s feet then, slowly, between gradually tightened vices. He lapsed into unconsciousness several times and Sobelov became impatient with the delay in reviving him. Still Silin said nothing when the torture started again. They used the bar with which they’d beaten his feet to break both his legs and his kneecaps. Silin screamed but didn’t talk.
Finally, exhausted, Sobelov said, ‘Remember, you’re responsible for what’s going to happen now.’
chapter 25
C harlie was back at Lesnaya in time to see the CNN transmission of the statement from both the Prime Minister and the American President, as well as the cable network’s round-up of the rest of the Western reaction. The British was by far the most reserved, the concentration upon the amount of material still missing rather than upon that recovered, a fact that was seized upon by the Russian television commentary, which Charlie considered the biggest bonus of all.
He considered calling Kestler, wanting to know anything additional to what he’d already seen and heard on Russian television that Hillary Jamieson might have found at Ulitza Volkhonka, but decided it could wait until the following morning when he talked to the American about the satellite voice pick-up at the same time as announcing his London return. It would probably have been difficult to locate either of them anyway: even this early in the evening Kestler would probably be working hard to add Hillary’s pubic scalp to his collection. He thought of packing for the following day but dismissed it as unnecessary preparation and instead poured a glass of Macallan, raised it to himself in lonely congratulation and said, ‘Well done, Charlie. Keep it up.’ He looked at his watch a lot, which was how he knew it was exactly seven-fifteen when Natalia finally rang.
‘Yetisyna broke, like a baby: the easiest ever,’ Natalia declared, needing to boast.
Nothing about his being closed out, thought Charlie: her speed, her priorities. ‘Totally?’
‘Enough. Classic bully persona, collapsing under the slightest pressure.’ Natalia used her account to Charlie as a rehearsal for the presentation the following day. She was glad now she hadn’t been able to contact Aleksai. She wanted him to hear it first with all the others: most of all to hear the repeated praise and congratulation from higher authority. Aleksai had been accorded his: now it was her turn.
When she finished Charlie said objectively; ‘How much do you believe?’
‘Most of it. He’s exaggerating, not actually lying.’
‘Who knows?’
‘Minister level. Fomin has promised a named reference to the President.’
‘Very good,’ acknowledged Charlie. ‘No one else?’
‘It’s going to be announced at a full meeting tomorrow.’
Not so good, thought Charlie, although he didn’t say so. ‘To which I am no longer admitted,’ he prompted.
‘I didn’t know it was going to happen,’ Natalia said at once, anxiously apologetic.
Charlie frowned, curiously. ‘Kestler thought it was a committee decision. I assumed you would have been present.’
‘I didn’t know in sufficient time to tell you,’ Natalia clarified. ‘I had to appoint interrogators to question the people arrested with the canisters: I was going to do it myself but then I had the message from Yatisyna that he wanted to see me, so everything had to be rescheduled. Everyone was assembled by the time I got there. Aleksai told me they thought it had been made public by the British and it had already been decided to withdraw all cooperation.’
‘By the British,’ pressed Charlie. ‘Not by me personally?’
‘No. You weren’t mentioned by name.’
‘And it was Popov who told you?’
‘Yes.’
Which was who it logically should have been, acknowledged Charlie. It was time he made his contribution. ‘The leak came from Moscow.’
‘How do you know?’ demanded the woman.
‘According to the Western count, twenty-two canisters were stolen, not nineteen, which was what the Reuter story said. It also identified Murom as the train’s destination: Kestler and I always assumed it was Gorkiy. We’d never heard of Murom. And what was taken has never been positively identified to us as plutonium 239. But it was in what Reuter put out.’
‘What are you going to do?’
Charlie didn’t want to cheat her but he had to lie: what she didn’t know she couldn’t inadvertently impede and what Natalia had just told him from her side increased the danger. So in ignorance she – and Sasha – would remain safe; he strained for any sound of his daughter in the background but couldn’t hear her. He had to move Natalia onwards and away with a scalpel-like finesse to prevent any experienced suspicion. ‘I have to go back.’
‘Back where?’ she asked, confused.
A good start, Charlie decided. ‘London.’
‘Ordered?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long for?’
Charlie detected no hesitation or voice change. ‘Re-evaluation, I guess. I don’t know.’ Did he have to be this brutal, after everything else he’d done to her? Cruel eventually to be kind, he tried to convince himself. And wasn’t convinced.
This time Natalia did hesitate. ‘Could it be permanent?’
Enough, Charlie determined. ‘No.’
‘Can you be sure?’
‘Permanently pulled out from something as big as this? You’ve got to be joking!’
‘There aren’t any jokes here, Charlie.’
And didn’t he know it! Risking that she’d been sufficiently deflected, he said, ‘I’ve got to leave tomorrow. So I need to know about the recovery now!’
It came disjointedly, a hurried, second-hand account of the Agayans and Shelapin Family purges to get to the interrogations in which she was personally involving herself. But Charlie refused to be hurried, breaking in to bring Natalia specifically back to everything she knew about what had happened at Ulitza Volkhonka. Which wasn’t much. It had been one of several addresses checked of known members of the Shelapin Family. It was a rabbit warren of apartment complexes, so a surprise approach had been impossible. By the time the Militia and Special Forces had closed around the identified address, it was barred against them: the demand that the door be opened had been answered by a scatter of Kaleshnikov fire that injured two Militia officers. The door had been blown in by a grenade. The first Militia man across the threshold had been killed instantly and it was in the resulting fire-fight three gang members had died. It was only later, after all the arrests, that the canisters were found in the basement garage of one of the dead men, who had been named as Anatoli Dudin, an acknowledged Shelapin gang member who had a criminal record stretching back almost twenty years. The canisters had been intact and concealed only by a tarpaulin thrown over them. Every arrested Shelapin man denied any knowledge of the canisters or of the Pizhma robbery: their lawyers were already demanding their release.
‘You still haven’t got Agayans or Shelapin themselves?’
‘No.’
‘Agayans is important, after what you got from Yatisyna.’
‘Charlie!’
‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘What about forensic, at Volkhona?’ It had been a mistake not trying to speak to Hillary Jamieson. ‘Have the canisters been checked for Dudin’s fingerprints? Anyone’s fingerprints?’